Fowler’s fixation on Benni as the alpha and omega of every mystery deprives readers of any opportunity for serious...
Spring 1978: Newlyweds Benni (Steps to the Altar, 2002, etc.) and Jack Harper take time out from conjugal relations to enroll in Professor Hill’s history class at Cal Poly San Celina. Jack’s too manly to be much of a writer, so he opts for keeping a journal as his final project. But Benni leaps at the chance to write a term paper on local author Emma Baldwin, whose The Secret of the Crazy Quilt was one of her childhood favorites. And Emma takes an immediate shine to Benni, in spite of the envious glances of her son Cody. Fast forward to 1995. Cody’s dead. Jack’s dead. Benni’s married to police chief Gabriel Ortiz, who’s every bit as interested as Jack in sex, but who has a dark, brooding side. Right now he’s brooding over his ex-LAPD buddy Luke Webster, who came to San Celina on private business, ate tacos with Gabe and Benni, and promptly joined the dead himself. But Gabe’s investigation of Luke’s murder is quickly back-burnered when someone starts harassing Benni—making threatening phone calls, trashing her truck, even following her up to Pasa Robles, where she’s renewed her friendship with Emma. How can Gabe keep order in the west when a stalker, perhaps even someone from his own past, is threatening his querida?
Fowler’s fixation on Benni as the alpha and omega of every mystery deprives readers of any opportunity for serious mystification. Even Professor Hill would give this one a D.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-425-18855-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Earnest, heavier than usual on old-fashioned detective work, and ritualistic to a fault. If you’re surprised by anything...
Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshall Everett Hitch face what amounts to an underground range war in Appaloosa.
The minute rancher James McCormick found gold on the parcel of land he’d purchased from Henri Baptiste, Baptiste rued the sale and tried everything he could to persuade McCormick and his brother, Daniel, to sell it back. The measures the Baptiste Group took included hiring seven gunslingers headed by fearsome Victor Bartholomew to intimidate the McCormicks and their miners, two of whom have now vanished. Nothing daunted, the McCormicks have engaged Edward Hodge and some gunmen of their own. As each side swaggers and threatens and waits for the other to back down, tensions rise across the town’s 4,000 souls. But dressmaker Allie French, Cole’s sweetie, still keeps her sights fixed firmly on Appaloosa Days, the celebration of local culture she’s enticed visiting actress/singer Martha Kathryn to join. Since sparks have instantly flown between Martha and Hitch, the lawmen have an even greater stake than usual in keeping the peace. But that promises to be harder than they know. An unnamed kid has broken out of jail, traced his roots to Appaloosa, and set his course for the troubled town, apparently robbing and killing everyone in his path except for a teamster’s wife whose Amazonian figure makes her even more intimidating than him. In short order, she takes him to bed, stokes the fires of his quest for vengeance, and tags along to provide logistical support. Cole and Hitch, who’ve now appeared in more novels written by Knott (Robert B. Parker’s Revelation, 2017, etc.) than by their creator, have little to do but stand around, tote up the rising body count and occasionally augment it, and offer gruffly monosyllabic responses to questions that come their way as the perfect storm gathers to strike their hometown.
Earnest, heavier than usual on old-fashioned detective work, and ritualistic to a fault. If you’re surprised by anything that happens, you need to read more Westerns.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1827-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to...
Rookie Twelve Sleep County Game Warden Joe Pickett’s not much of a shot, and he’s been looking like a goat ever since poacher Ote Keeley got the drop on him with his own gun during a routine arrest. But at least he’s doing better than Ote, who’s turned up dead on the woodpile outside Joe’s house. Joe’s search in Crazy Woman Creek canyon for the two outfitters and guides Ote was most recently partnered with ends happily, though violently, and suddenly Joe is the man of the hour. Longtime County Sheriff Bud Barnum nervously asks Joe’s assurance that he’s not going to support neighboring game warden Wacey Hedeman’s challenge in the upcoming election; trophy wife Aimee Kensinger, who really likes men in uniforms, invites Joe’s family to housesit her palatial digs for three weeks; and wily Vern Dunnegan, Joe’s predecessor, wants Joe to join him in pulling down big bucks from InterWest resources, the fat-cat corporation for whose gas pipeline Vern’s lining up local support. All this good news is only a front, of course, for a monstrous assault on Joe’s livelihood, his integrity, and his family—and incidentally on an inoffensive species long assumed extinct. In response, Joe promises one of the bad guys that “things are going to get real western,” and that’s exactly what happens in the satisfyingly action-filled climax.
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to imagine tourism-marketing exec Box topping his debut.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14748-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
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